What a delicious weekend ...
Friday evening, our beloved local French restaurant reopened its doors for the winter. I, needless to say, had booked my table well in advance. Chef Charly and bosslady Merindah had been on a working excursion to the island of Mauritius and we were promised that we would see the influence of that culinary experience on the menu ...
Well, I have never been to Mauritius, but one has to experiment ... and that all sounded pretty nice to me! Well, I'm here to tell you it was. With bells on. Utterly delicious. Preceded by an equally delicious mackerel carpaccio and accompanied by a good Burgundy ...
Chuckle. I couldn't even wait for the soup to be poured over the fish before snapping the plate ... a fine, fine meal ...
Saturday was nap day. Recovery day. A little cool: as little, even, as 15 degrees, so I wasn't tempted to go across the road for a paddle. But Sunday dawned bright and beautiful. Sundays, the Kiosk on the beach stays open till 2pm, so one can go there for lunch. Lunch, a cup of coffee, the sunshine and a nice read of a good book.
And that's what I did. Lunch on André's pork miso soup (again!), nice coffee in a cardboard cup, the sunshine pouring down gently on my legs and my bald patch and ... the book. It turned out to be a good book indeed!
I've read (and reviewed) hundreds of fantasy novels in my time. But the works of anyone writing in that genre in the 21st century has to be compared in quality with the likes of the early books of Jordan, with Terry Pratchett, and with Terry Brooks. Originality is hard to find. And paired with actual writing ability, even rarer. But this book, The Good Mage, succeeds on all counts. I've only read the first eight chapters, today, on the beach. Slow, I kniow. But with good books I read every word, only in the case of run-of-the-mill books do I speed-read and skip.
But here's the surprise. This book is a self-published work. It was apparently submitted to a number of commercial publishers ... well, we in the book business all know that nowadays commercial publishers don't read unsolicited manuscripts, or even most of the solicited ones, as they did in my day ... but turned down or ringed round with such preposterous financial considerations as to make it impossible.
How do I know that? Because the author, 'Solee Stagbeetle' is a young Yambonian. I read about him and his book on the Yamba Notice Board, and one of my first acts on arriving at my Winter Palace was to purchase a copy of The Good Mage. Solee delivered it in person, and my critic's brain immediately whispered too me: 'If he writes as well as he speaks ...'
Well, he does. He is a writer. No, not everybody who writes is. A huge percentage of books, and most things that come out of Universities, show the calculated signs of effort in the writing. Which makes for effortful and uncomfortable reading. Stagbeetle's prose rolls easily off the page, in natural, colourful, wholly accessible language, which carries the story eagerly forward ... it is so very, very readable. Writers are born, not created in Creative Literature classes, and, well, he was just, simply born that way.
Add to that, that the quota of originality in the tale hits a highpoint on page one ... and hasn't slackened by page 60 (that's where I'm up to) ... this is a ruddy fine read. Congratulations, Sir Stagbeetle, and long may you write ....
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